Monday, December 11, 2017

Happy Monday! I absolutely adore the time I spend each week putting together new volumes of Monday Must Reads. Throughout the week, I stumble on so many great ideas on twitter, and I always make sure to hit the like button. But, I find that by the end of the week, I've already forgotten these awesome ideas. The act of going through my likes once per week and summarizing them in this manner is a great time for reflecting on what I would like to change in my classroom/do in the future.

Here are this week's Must Reads!

Dave shares some fun Christmas activities which practice transformations. These are adorable and make me wish I was teaching geometry so I could use them. He has graciously uploaded the files on TES to be downloaded for free!

Jzitzka offers up a new-to-me activity for practicing combining like terms. I used to love the dot game as a kid, so I can see my students really getting into this. A quick google search shows that this activity can be downloaded here.

Amanda Atkinson shares some ideas for engaging students after finishing an assessment. The Star Wars System of Equations Problem was featured in last week's volume of Monday Must Reads. The Compound Inequalities Treasure Hunt is a new one for me. I found a version online here. I'll definitely be adapting this for my inequalities unit next year.

Amie Albrecht shares a great activity for sparking discussions regarding vertical alignment. We need to be aware of what students are doing before they enter our class and what they will be doing after they leave our class.

Inspired by the puzzles I've been typing up for my classroom, Sarah Witt has started to do the same. Check out this awesome puzzle from Jumbo Book of Puzzles: The Ultimate Collection that Sarah typed up! She has uploaded the file here for you to download and print for your classroom.

Sunday, December 10, 2017

It's Sunday evening. Today can be summed up by this equation: Sunday = Church + Wal-mart + Dishes + Baking + Function Notation. I've been doing my best to tackle the mountain of dishes that has a tendency to grow out of control when you've spent the past week being sick and recovering from having your wisdom teeth removed. It also doesn't help that the husband has now caught my cold...

Just to make my pile of dishes even larger, I decided to do some baking. Tomorrow is Cookie Club, so I always spend Sunday doing at least a bit of baking. For that, I decided to change things up a bit and make a sour cream bundt cake. Then, I had some bananas that were looking very sad, so I whipped up a loaf of banana bread. This will make the trek to school tomorrow because the high school teachers are responsible this week for keeping the teacher's lounge stocked with goodies to eat. Last week, the middle school teachers provided a week's worth of snacks, so it's our turn.

My husband and I watched the first two episodes of The Great American Baking Show. We watched them make lamingtons which are a traditional Australian dessert. Despite visiting Australia three times, I still haven't had a chance to eat one. Shaun mentioned that they are one of his favorites, so as I type this, I have a cake in the oven to make into lamingtons tomorrow.

Enough about today. I want to share a file I created a few weeks ago to introduce my Algebra 1 students to the idea of discrete vs. continuous. I've been finding blogging a bit harder than normal the past few weeks because I keep getting this feeling that I don't have any ideas worth sharing. I know this isn't true. Hello, I've written over one thousand blog posts now. But, that doesn't stop my mind from trying to convince me otherwise. Hopefully, the upcoming holidays and break from school will give me a chance to recharge and get back to blogging more regularly.

Anywho. Let's get back to discrete vs. continuous.

Students were given six cards. Each card had ONE of the following filled in: situation, variables, or sketch of graph. As a class, we filled in the missing information and classified each card as discrete or continuous.

Before beginning our sorting activity, we did a quick note page summary of discrete vs. continuous.

Here's what our finished product looked like after A LOT of discussion and debate and more discussion. It took a lot longer to complete this activity than I expected, but it was a productive use of our time.

I was afraid that my finished product wasn't going to live up to my expectations when I was creating this activity. But, I absolutely loved how this activity turned out.

Domain and Range went so much smoother this year than it did in years past. I think a big difference was that we had discussed discrete vs. continuous BEFORE talking domain and range. In the past, I tried to introduce both ideas simultaneously. Sometimes our students just need to digest one concept before starting the next.

Saturday, December 9, 2017

So, I started this post earlier this week, but it has sat unfinished due to the fact that I've been sick and had my upper wisdom teeth removed. Thankfully, I am recovering from both. I didn't have to miss any school this week which was a real blessing because we all know it's way more work to miss school than actually be there...

I've been doing a lot of thinking about puzzles lately thanks to the addition of a puzzle table to my classroom this year. Each week, I place a new puzzle on the table for students to work on. A new puzzle is placed out every Monday morning and packed up every Friday. I have really enjoyed both of the past two week's puzzles, but my students have shown a clear preference for one of the puzzles. This has got me thinking about what makes a good puzzle.

Last week, we tackled the color square puzzle from Puzzle Box, Volume 1 (affiliate link). This book is my current top recommendation for teachers who are looking to incorporate more puzzles into their classroom. Or, maybe you want a challenge yourself. What I love about this book is that the puzzles are accessible but still challenging. Many puzzle books start with too difficult of a level of puzzles, and it can be easily frustrating. These puzzles seem doable but often turn out to be trickier than you first expected.

If you missed last week's blog post with instructions and a printable version of the color square puzzle for your classroom, you can find that here.

My students tackled this puzzle all week long between classes and after finishing their work. As students worked at the puzzle, their struggle brought other students to the puzzle table to see what all the fuss was about. This engaged even more students. A handful of students succeeded in solving the puzzle. My students were engaged ALL week long for the most part.

Some students would make comments about how I was "torturing" them with these puzzles they couldn't figure out. But, those same students would be back at the puzzle table day after day trying to tackle the puzzle.

Due to last week's success, I decided to tackle a similar puzzle from Puzzle Box, Volume 3 (affiliate link). This is Puzzle 170 in the book, and it was authored by Peter Grabarchuk.

You are given a pyramid shaped board and nine squares. There are three squares of three different colors. Additionally, there are three different symbols possible for each square.

The task is to arrange the nine squares into the pyramid so that no two squares with the same color or same shape touch each other ALONG AN EDGE. Last week's puzzle didn't allow pieces to touch at a corner. In this puzzle, pieces CAN touch at a corner. They just can't touch at an edge. So, the X pieces in the picture above are in an allowed arrangement.

I've uploaded the files for this puzzle here so you can download and play along. The game board is designed to print on 11 x 17 cardstock (affiliate link). The game pieces are designed to print on three different colors of letter sized paper. You will need to print the same page three separate times on three separate colors. If you don't have access to 11 x 17 paper, you can scale the print job to fit on letter sized paper. Remember what scale value you used so you can scale the game pieces by the same percent. Otherwise, the game pieces will be too large for your downsized gameboard!

When the new puzzle was set out on Monday, many of the same students who had tackled the color square puzzle last week, tried their hand at this puzzle. Something different happened, however. On Tuesday, students started solving it. Then, they didn't want any more to do with it. More students didn't get sucked in. Instead, it just sat there, basically untouched, for the last part of the week.

Last week, they vented their frustration about how hard the puzzle was. This week, they vented their frustration about how they would be bored for the rest of the week since they had already solved the puzzle.

Here are my thoughts. As you can see, I have many more questions than answers.

Both are great puzzles. I solved both and enjoyed solving both.

Students enjoyed solving both.

Frustration is not a bad thing. Students would rather be frustrated than bored. Though, I'm not sure a student would admit that...

I don't think the problem is with the puzzles but with my puzzle table. When a student finishes one puzzle, they need another puzzle to tackle immediately to prevent boredom. But, how do I pull this off? At the moment, I have a limited number of puzzles ready for my puzzle table. I can't put them all out. Should I place multiple puzzles out at the same time? Should I just accept the fact that some week's puzzles will engage students for longer than others?

Monday, December 4, 2017

Hello, Monday! I'm still getting over a very inconvenient cold, so today will most likely be a VERY long day of school. But, I can't imagine a better way to kick off this Monday than a new volume of Monday Must Reads. Each Monday, I post a quick recap of what awesome stuff the rest of you have been up to.

In other exciting news, this is my 1000th post on this blog. I have to say that I never thought my blog would make it this far when I started it back in 2011 as a student teacher. I'm usually the one to start a new project that only lasts a few months before moving on to the next new project. But, it turns out that being a part of the #MTBoS isn't just a fad. It's a lifetime of friendships. Thanks to everyone who reads this blog and encourages me to continue posting. It's because of you that my blog has come this far!

I hope you enjoy reading through the ideas I found most inspiring this week.

Allison Hartwig shares some awesome student work from a geometry project where students had to evaluate advertisements and slogans. Any assignment that gets students thinking critically (and mathematically) about the world around them is a huge win in my book.

Lita Stanton combines creativity and slope with a fun practice activity. I love the idea of combining twelve small graphs to make one large picture! If you create an assignment like this, please share so I can steal it!

I've never been a Star Wars fan, but I still love how Mrs. Richardson combined Star Wars and systems of equations to make an awesome task. She even graciously uploaded the file for all of us to use here.

Michael Moore recently penned a blog post about an idea called "Math is Fun Fridays." In this post, he includes a link to a google doc full of ideas to show students the more fun side of math. I loved scrolling through this list. Many items are the list were old favorites, but I did run across some new-to-me ideas. For example, have you ever thought about how long 10! (ten factorial) seconds is? Michael is encouraging everyone to "Take an Idea, Leave an Idea." So, be sure to check out instructions for how to add your own ideas to the google doc!

Amanda Atkinson shares an inequality activity by Sarah Jurhs. I didn't do the best job this year of teaching my students the difference between AND and OR compound inequalities. I think this hand-on activity would be the perfect intro to AND versus OR. Plus, I already have some play money in my cabinet that I've had for years without any idea of what to use it for! You can download this stations activity here.

Liz Mastalio has created a BRILLIANT introduction to systems of linear equations. Students have to roll two dice to form an ordered pair. Then, they have to test that ordered pair to see if it is a solution to their system of equations. You can read more details on Liz's blog here.

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